Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

I joined Facebook. After years of thinking such things were too frivolous for me, one random thought about an old friend got me wondering who I might find if I joined. After less than 24 hours I had reconnected with half a dozen people I hadn't heard from in years. After 48 hours that number had more than doubled. I've had a nice e-mail exchange with my high school prom date. A few months earlier I somewhat reluctantly joined LinkedIn, the businesslike version of Facebook, and found it potentially useful, but pretty dull. Facebook is just plain FUN! Stuff like this was unheard of in the 20th Century. I'm glad I finally made it to the 21st.

Does anyone in cyberspace want to have a civilized discussion anymore? There was an article in the Herald of April 17th about some Monterey and Salinas area McDonald's employees suing their employer for allegedly demanding they work off the clock if they wanted to keep their jobs. Other alleged offenses were changing employee time records and requiring employees to use their vehicles on company business without mileage compensation. The article mentioned that many McDonald's employees are immigrants who don't know the law all that well and are thus easily intimidated by their employers. That is not at all far-fetched. Heck, I've seen situations where all-American white skinned people with college degrees feel intimidated enough to work off the clock because "company policy does not permit overtime" even though there's more work to do. It does happen. Several of the reader comments on the Herald's "Topix" forum were nothing short of racist...

Here's a video about my favorite news publication. I grew up with the Christian Science Monitor , and I recommend it to everyone because of its unbiased, solution-oriented approach to reporting. It doesn't just tell you what's going on, it helps you understand why. It's entirely free on the web, and you can subscribe to their portable weekly magazine. <a href="http://www.linkedtube.com/OtKZHB8zp7Id97dc495cf485ec12c0f839eb4e1a4cd.htm">LinkedTube</a>

I've never understood why radio stations change their formats with no advance notice. One popular station, KIDD, better known as Magic 63, did just that last week, unleashing a flurry of fury from upset listeners. Magic 63 presented an easy-listening format for a good 20 years, playing classic recordings of people like Nat King Cole, Petula Clark, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra, along with some newer artists like Diana Krall and Peter Cincotti. When it started long ago, Magic 63 was playing the music that was popular with the 50-somethings to the 60-somethings of the day. Now that these people are in their 70s and 80s, the station has gone back to serving the 50s to 60s bracket as "Oldies 630." That is not too radical a change in my estimation, and even allows for a little overlap in the offerings. Still, quite a few people wrote angry letters to The Herald saying they'd never listen to the new "rock & roll" format, which now features such blatantly...

Evidently sex sells fear even better than it sells beer. Convicted child molester James Lamb was officially released from prison a year ago, but it wasn't until last week, after two aborted attempts, that the government was able to find a home for him that satisfied the requirements of the law. No sooner than the news broke as to his whereabouts, the neighbors came out with their knives and pitchforks demanding he be moved elsewhere. They say they can't let their children out of the house now. Let's get real. James Lamb did some horrible things, but he's unlikely to be a danger to anyone now. First of all, he's been castrated. He's also been through ten years of treatment, he's shackled to a GPS device that monitors his whereabouts 24/7, his home is under guard, he's subject to random searches of his home, and his face has been plastered on every newscast and newspaper in the county so everyone knows who he is. I'd feel safer living next door to J...

The Monterey Herald has taken a lot of flak this week for a headline in last Monday's paper. It read "Cop killer was depressed, struggling." Apparently several people read this and thought the Herald was somehow justifying or excusing the actions of that guy in Oakland who killed four police officers last week. I didn't see it that way at all. Making an observation is not the same as making a judgment. Making note of the killer's mental health hardly constitutes an endorsement of his behavior. What I saw in that headline was not an excuse, but a warning that mentally ill people aren't getting the help they need. An ounce of prevention or intervention might have kept four Oakland police officers alive.

One of those knockoff phone books landed on our doorstep a few days ago. It's the one called "Valley Yellow Pages." I don't know whose valley they refer to, but we're on a peninsula here. Phone books usually have a nice photo or illustration of the community contained within its pages. At first glance, this one has a nice photo of the Pacific Grove shoreline. But somebody with no sense of scale decided to blend in a separate scene of seals and sea gulls perched on a rock. The result is a rocky shoreline with seagulls larger than the trunks of mature cypress trees. I think Valley Yellow Pages should lose their right to use Photoshop.